The Resolute Woman

Author: resolutewoman

  • What if?

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    by

    resolutewoman
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    What if you had made a different choice? What if you had taken a different path? What if? In a review of the book Home is Not a Country, Nayantara Dutta writes that the book “felt most memorable because of how it explored this tension between our fascination with the what-ifs, and how they distract…

  • The heart of empathy

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    resolutewoman
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    What is empathy? Christopher Myers, in his introduction for Home Is Not a Country, offers one answer. “It seems to me,” he says, “that this knowledge—that you could have just as easily been any one of a hundred other people—is at the heart of empathy. It’s the realization that every person you meet, or see…

  • A home is a thing to be made

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    by

    resolutewoman
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    What is your home? Is it the house where you live? What if you move to a different house? Is your home the people you live with—the people you love? In the acknowledgements for her book Home Is Not a Country, Safia Elhillo thanks the global Sudanese community “for teaching me that a home is…

  • Just be “nice”

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    resolutewoman
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    I never have liked the word “nice.” Somehow, it always seems a bit trite, but the word is packed with a lot of information. That’s why I like this quote by anonymous. “Treat everyone with kindness, even those who are rude to you, not because they are nice but because you are.” –Joy

  • Remember kindness

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    resolutewoman
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    I sometimes have to remind myself that I can be kind to everyone. “Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not,” Henry James once said. –Joy

  • Be a rainbow

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    resolutewoman
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    We all have had too many cloudy days recently. I have always loved this quote from Maya Angelou, and I am going to take Maya’s advice and be a rainbow today. “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud,” Maya Angelou once said. –Joy

  • Don’t be yourself

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    by

    resolutewoman
    in ,

    I like this quote—a lot. It comes from “anonymous,” and I don’t remember where I found it. “Don’t be yourself. Be someone nicer.” –Joy

  • Take a trip

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    resolutewoman
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    I’m escaping! I am tired of “vegetating in one little corner of the earth.” I am planning trips again—and I hope the crazy COVID numbers stay lower and this pandemic doesn’t interfere with my plans. I agree with Mark Twain, who once said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our…

  • Keep walking

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    resolutewoman
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    “I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it,” Kierkegaard once said. “But, by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill.”

  • Trying to try

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    resolutewoman
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    In her new book Good Enough, Kate Bowler writes, “Trying feels harder than it did before.” “We are trying,” she explains. “Well, we are trying to try….We will have to find enough momentum to reach for a life that is never perfect, but good enough.”